Abstract: Rev. Winfred B. Schaller was a leader in the creation of the Church of Lutheran Confession (CLC). He served as editor of the
CLC's first periodical,
The Lutheran Spokesman, from June 1958 until he was forced to resign in August 1970. He left the CLC in 1972 and finished his ministry in service
to a congregation of the Missouri Synod in Indio, California.

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Winfred B. Schaller Jr. (December 16, 1922 - March 4, 1983) was a Lutheran minister and leader in the Church of Lutheran Confession
(CLC). Due to unresolved differences with the leaders and sensing that he no longer represented the thinking of the CLC, he
left the organization in 1972.

One of a long line of Lutheran ministers and professors, Schaller graduated in 1947 from the Wisconsin Synod Seminary at Thiensville,
Wisconsin. He served as pastor in Gresham, Nebraska. In 1949, he founded Redeemer Church and a day school in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
While there he wrote,
Concerning Church Fellowship. With a few edits, this became an essential part of the Church of Lutheran Confession organization. Schaller and others
objected strongly to the later interpretation of the document that was slanted to exclude everyone not in the CLC, which appeared
in E. Schaller, "Omnes Christiani de Evangelio Consentiunt,"
Journal of Theology (Church of Lutheran Confession), No. 1, February 1961, 8-24.

The CLC was formed as a response to doctrinal differences with members of the Synodical Conference: the Wisconsin Evangelical
Lutheran Synod, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (Norwegian). The central concern was
that no union should take place with other Lutheran synods without total agreement on doctrine. When the Wisconsin Synod broke
from the Missouri Synod, the CLC maintained that there was still a significant difference in doctrine. Schaller considered
this difference an invention in order for the CLC to remain as a separate organization.

In 1963, he moved to California and served under the direction of the CLC Board of Missions in San Fernando Valley. There
he assisted the Servant of Christ Church. He also helped found St. Stephen Lutheran in San Francisco Bay peninsula and a
group in Fresno.

He served as editor of
The Lutheran Spokesman from its initial issue in June 1958 through his final issue in June 1970. In the first issue, he writes about why a new
periodical is needed: "Lutheranism has fallen on evil days. One Lutheran body after another has lost its confessional character
or is in the process of losing it."

In his last issue, in August 1970, he expresses concern over the issue of unionism. He writes: "In the early years the pen
pointed directly at laxity in doctrine and the unionistic spirit of the day. In the latter days the editorial concern was
more and more directed at the excesses and extremes of those fighting for confessionalism and doctrinal purity. The cures
for unionism were all too often more fatal than the disease. Had we who fought for orthodoxy, confessionalism and truth created
monsters of legalism, pietism and sectarianism? I confess today that this remains my chief concern." He concludes, "Our last
prayer is that the Church of Lutheran Confession be both confessional and ecumenical."

He left the CLC in 1972. In a letter on "Why We Left the CLC," Schaller writes that he was censored more and more and then
forced to resign from the periodical (See
Why We Left the CLC ). He finished his ministry serving a congregation in Indio, California, of the Missouri Synod. He died in 1983.